Tag Archives: Venus

Life on Venus, or the possibility thereof, has been a hot topic as of late. There’s also been plenty of controversies, including the (still disputed) discovery of phosphine, a potential biomarker in the atmosphere. The best way to lay that controversy to rest would be to go there and actually take samples, which at the very least, would help constrain ...

The tantalizing possibility that life exists in the clouds of Venus is once again causing a stir amongst planetary scientists this week. Researchers out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cardiff University, and the University of Cambridge have proposed that some longstanding ‘anomalies’ in the composition of Venus’ atmosphere might be explained by the presence of ammonia. But ammonia itself ...

According to multiple lines of evidence, Venus was once a much different planet than it is today. But roughly 500 million years ago, a massive resurfacing event triggered a runaway greenhouse effect that led to the hot, poisonous, and hellish environment we see there today. Therefore, the study of Venus presents an opportunity to model the evolution of planetary environments, ...

Thanks to evidence provided by missions like NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, scientists have theorized that Venus likely experienced a catastrophic resurfacing event about 500 million years ago (give or take 200 Mya). This is believed to be the reason why Venus is such a hellish place today, with an atmosphere that is 92 times as dense as Earth’s, predominantly composed of ...

BepiColombo recently had its first close flyby of Mercury, its eventual mission target, and got to snap some pictures to commemorate the event.  Even at this early stage of the mission, these images are some of the clearest we have ever had of the innermost planet. The spacecraft itself passed within about 199 km of the planet’s surface.  Unfortunately, it ...